Page 202 - Jurnal Kurikulum BPK 2020

these, meanings and collocations are important components in vocabulary depth (Qian, 1998,
1999, 2000, 2002; Qian & Schedl, 2004; Wang, 2014).

PAST RESEARCHES ON VB AND VD IN READING

Qian’s studies are worth mentioning because he is one of the pioneers in acknowledging
the significance of VB and VD in reading comprehension. Qian (1999) conducted an
investigation on the association between VB and depth and reading comprehension among 33
Chinese and 41 Korean L2 English learners. The findings show association between depth and
reading was the highest (r = 0.82, p = 0.05). Besides, VD added a unique portion of 11% of
explained variance in reading comprehension when VB was held constant with 60% of
explained variance in reading comprehension.
Qian (2002) carried out another study among 217 students attending ESL programme
at Toronto University. The study has found that correlation coefficients among TOEFL-
reading, TOEFL–vocabulary item measure and breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge
were lower, ranging between 0.68 and 0.80. The correlation between depth and reading (r =
0.77, p<0.01) was again higher than breadth and reading (r = 0.74, p<0.01). In regression
analyses, even though depth was entered at second step, it still provided an additional 13%-
14% of the criterion variance over and above VB measure and TOEFL–vocabulary item
measure respectively.
Yusun et al. (2012) have found a similar result to Qian’s findings where VD made a
unique contribution (11%) to reading over and above listening comprehension and VB. Even
in reversed order, VB failed to add a significant variance to reading (Yusun et al., 2012).
Besides, Mehrpour et al. (2011) analysed the Beta indices of the two predictors and have found
that every unit increase in the level of VD, the reading comprehension score would increase by
0.46 which was higher compared to VB with a Beta index of 0.32.
The significant relation of VD and reading comprehension is substantiated by
Mohammadi and Shakouri's (2014) finding which compared the effects of the two vocabulary
teaching methods in line with breadth and depth on reading ability (TOEFL test) of 70 students
studying at Islamic Azad University of Tonekabon, Iran. Mohammadi and Shakouri’s (2014)
study has shown teaching VD is better than teaching VB as it could help better understanding
in reading. In addition, Choi's (2013) finding also has discovered the importance of VD’s role
in reading and its greater impact on reading comprehension compared to VB.
Nonetheless, studies conducted by Li and Kirby (2014) and Wang (2014) have revealed
that VB significantly predicts reading. VD as measured in Li and Kirby’s (2014) study were
knowledge precision, polysemy and word formation. The sample comprised 246 younger
participants who were from Grade 8 English immersion classes in middle school in China. Li
and Kirby (2014) claim that both VB and depth contributed to reading but breadth contributed
more variance (i.e. 9%, p < 0.01) in reading comprehension even after controlling for depth
than vice versa. Meanwhile, depth only added 1%, which is statistically insignificant to reading
comprehension after VB was entered into the regression.
Wang (2014) believes that VD and breadth of ESL learners are related to reading
comprehension and linguistic competence. Wang’s (2014) study shows that VB alone could
predict larger variance in reading comprehension which was 28.3%. However, the variance of
reading comprehension accounted for by VB alone in Elmasry’s (2012) study was higher than
that in Wang’s (2014). Elmasry (2012) reported VB alone explained 40% of variance in reading
comprehension but VD alone accounted for only 31.9% of variance in reading comprehension.
Moinzadeh and Moslehpour's (2012) study of 81 students majoring in English
Literature at Shiraz University, Iran, aged between 21 to 25 years old found that VB contributed
more to reading comprehension (test taken from Longman TOEFL) as the standardized

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